The recent Church of England report – which looked at how young Britons relate to Christianity today – must have made bleak reading for its publishers. If it is better to be hated than to be ignored, the findings indicate the worst possible kind of snub. Of the infrequent churchgoers the researchers worked with, a few – 12% – held atheistic beliefs, and the number of traditional theists not much higher, at 23%. The largest group by far – 43% – preferred the option "I don't really know what to think", indicating, apparently, not a state of angst, but a contented lack of concern with the question. For all these young people, the researchers go on to say, Christianity is typically experienced as "a very faded, inherited cultural memory". That's got to hurt.

But can these findings be simply understood as just another nail in the coffin for British Christianity? On the face of it, that would certainly seem to be the case. The picture they paint of the religious landscape is, for one, more or less accurate. The number of nonbelievers is slightly low, perhaps: current figures suggest atheism accounts for about twice that number.

The size of the large group of uncertain and unconcerned is, however, consistent with other findings. Pascal Siegers's research at the University of Cologne puts the number of those who are indifferent to religion at 38.9% for the UK (compared with a 26.6% share for atheism, 23.2% for religion and 11.4% for alternative spirituality). It may be that this group is something similar to what Professor David Voas at the University of Manchester has called "the fuzzy faithful", which occur in similar numbers. If so, indifference certainly looks to be an important feature of British religious life, and – with Siegers's figures coming from 1999 and Voas's from 2008 – apparently a fairly permanent one.

On the other hand, "indifferent" might not necessarily be the right word to describe these people. Other evidence points to a number of outlooks that might be mistakenly understood as a lack of interest. The issue might be, for example, that a person is struggling to articulate their outlook, rather than that they don't care – a case of "I don't know how to sort out what I think" much more than "I don't know what to think". This reading would be consistent with recent findings that show higher education levels correlating not only with higher levels of atheism but with higher levels of theism, also. What lower education levels are associated with is exactly this "fuzzy" middle-ground position. Voas's interpretation is that less-educated people may lack the ability or the confidence to articulate their beliefs. What appears as bored confusion might, in fact, be frustrated confusion.

And education is not the only issue. Apparent indifference might also be an expression of taken-for-granted nonreligion. In our secular society, being nonreligious is essentially a secure and often elite position – something that might lead not to indifference so much as nonchalance. This is something I have seen time and again in my own research (with the University of Cambridge and the Economic and Social Research Council), which uses indepth interviews to explore British nonreligion. One Londoner, for example, told me casually that he was not that interested in religion, that he really felt quite neutral towards religions. Asked if he could imagine entering into a long-term partnership or marriage with someone who had strong religious convictions, his quick reply was: "No way!"

Ask Britons if religion is significant to them and they often say no; ask them about their personal or professional relationships with religious people, whether they would send their child to a faith school, about the pope's visit, whether they think fundamentalist violence or gender inequality are things that are intrinsic to religion or not and you begin to see the myriad ways with which these people – who are apparently not very religious nor very nonreligious – are, in fact, negotiating religion (and nonreligion) in their day-to-day lives. The research does not always probe deeply enough, pushing the indifference to see what – untested and untroubled – convictions lie below the surface.

Reporting the findings of the "generation Y" project on the Church of England website and in Christian Today, the tone is, however, upbeat: young people, they report, might not have inherited their parents' generation's hostility to the church. And maybe they're right to be upbeat. We know, after all, that 72% of respondents identified themselves as Christian in the 2001 census for England and Wales – an anomalous figure usually attributed to the associations the survey design built between this question and the issue of ethnicity. It does seem to be the case that thinking about cultural identity primes British people to think of themselves as Christian.

In fact, it may well be that as the number of believers continues to decline, some form of indifference is the best hope the church has for maintaining this cultural appeal. Hostility can certainly present a more insurmountable barrier than indifference. My research has also shown this slightly perverse effect of secularisation, in which people leaving a church can maintain interest in or become curious about any number of religions other than the one from which they come.

One young woman, 25, explained how she could be a cultural tourist when participating in other religions, and could be unselfconsciously curious, engaged and respectful. In contrast, participation in the Christian church, the church she had rejected, was hard to tolerate; she either became angry with the church or the religion, or she became angry with herself, with what she saw as her own hypocrisy in participating in it – hypocrisy she did not feel in other religious contexts. In the end, she simply tried to avoid the Christian church altogether.

Thus, it may well be that Christianity becomes a more pronounced aspect of our cultural heritage as we distance ourselves further from belief in its theological doctrine and our own personal involvement with it. Fading memories are perhaps a condition of renewed cultural engagement.